Hi. I write fantasy novels, and I'd like to create a 3D world for prospective readers to visit. Eventually, I'd like this to be an interactive world where they could either walk around, go by horseback, or fly around on a dragon to visit various caves, forests, etc. I also want the world to be interactive, where visitors can meet NPCs and hear about various legends and artifacts. I was trying to figure out if this would be plausible with the Blender Game engine when a user (MMph) recommended I look into Crystal Space. And now, having read through a bunch of the Crystal Space documentation, I have a couple of questions.

First, there was a great deal of coding throughout the CS documentation. Is this just an explanation of the source code that's already built into Crystal Space (and Crystal Entity Layer) or is the end user (me) required to produce a similar amount of code to create their game / walkthrough.

Second, in terms of workflow (creating character meshes; armatures; animations for walk cycles or pointing to stuff), can anyone describe which parts would be best done in Blender and which in the Crystal Space or CEL environment?

And third, I'm in the process of learning Python right now. Can i do my Crystal Space coding in this, or would I have to commit the time to learning C++ instead.

To create a walkthrough you actually need no code at all. You can just create your world in Blender and then run that world in the default walktest application. If you want to make a game then the amount of code you need depends on the game but a simple game can be made with little code.

In blender you would do the full creation of the 3D world, character models, animations and such. In CS or CEL you would provide the actual game logic (in C++, XML, or Python).

You can make full games in CS or CEL using Python alone. Many people are doing just that.

IN FACT, you can have an animated character walk around the world, pick items up and do simple quests using NO programming at all- you just need blender and blender2crystal... There is already provided scripts to help you get up and running.